Posts Tagged ‘Election 2001’

I have several things to say about this. The slate running to replace Mayor Annise Parker features a globetrotting sailor, a triathlete grandfather, a millionaire minister and no women. Despite the most-crowded pack of mayoral contenders in decades, no female candidates are expected to announce bids this spring, a reality that all but guarantees women […]

Not official yet, but stories like this don’t get run without justification. Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia is sending every possible message that he intends to run for mayor this year, aggressively increasing his political operations and signaling to some of his closest advisers and fiercest backers that a campaign may be imminent. Garcia, under […]

Details are pending, but one way or another we’ll get to vote on some charter changes next November. City Council members on Thursday agreed that any city charter reforms, including changes to term limits, should go to voters in November rather than May next year, but they kicked most substantive discussion of those issues to […]

Bring it on. Last week, San Antonio passed an ordinance protecting gay and transgendered residents and veterans from discrimination. Houston Mayor Annise Parker says that vote “upped the ante” and that Houston should follow suit. “It is absolutely something we should do, and the majority of council members have publicly stated they are in support […]

Bill King makes an observation about Ben Hall’s chances in the upcoming Mayoral election. When Lee Brown was elected mayor in 1997, many pundits predicted that with Houston’s growing minority community, Houston had seen its last white mayor. That, of course, proved not to be the case as Bill White and Annise Parker defeated minority […]

It’s on. Former Houston City Attorney Benjamin L. Hall III announced his candidacy for mayor Wednesday, choosing a slogan of “Hall for All!” and emphasizing his ability to unite people. Hall said he filed a form designating a campaign treasurer late Tuesday, the first formal step in his bid to unseat Annise Parker this fall. […]

I’ve been waiting for this. Activists are preparing a petition to put a referendum on Houston’s November ballot, calling for a ban on discrimination against gays and permission for the city to grant health insurance benefits to the unmarried partners of city employees. If organizers collect the 20,000 signatures needed to get it on the […]

All through the Early Voting period, I’ve been comparing turnout this year to elections from 2005 through 2009. It’s not like we didn’t have elections in this city before then, of course. Obviously, the city now is different than it was before, and as such I don’t know how much there is to learn from […]

For the Sunday that is the last day before the start of early voting, the Chron brings us their overview of the Mayor’s race. And a theme we’ve seen expressed once or twice before. Political analysts predict Mayor Annise Parker has a virtual lock on a second term, but she still has a lot at […]

Good for them. On Thursday, words like “abomination,” “sin” and “Satan” were commonplace in City Council chambers as the audience weighed in on a tiny portion of San Antonio’s $2.2 billion budget. The council listened to three hours of public comment on an estimated $300,000 line item that will extend benefits to domestic partners — […]

Where have I heard this before? November’s election really is about 2013, said lawyer, lobbyist and blogger Robert Miller. He speculates that the mayor needs to win big against low-profile opponents in November to discourage stronger candidates from running against her as she seeks a final term in 2013. “If she looks weak, blood attracts […]

Finance report updates: David Robinson has filed his corrected report, which includes the $53,095.57 cash on hand total that was omitted in the original. There were no other changes made. Mayoral candidate Kevin Simms has now filed his report. He lists $4,033.83 in contributions, $2,873.79 in expenses, and $1,160.04 on hand. Interestingly, he also lists […]

As we know, the Lege passed a bill that would have the effect of moving the date for primary runoffs into May. This is causing heartburn for cities like Austin that hold their municipal elections in May of even numbered years. The proposal would give U.S. troops deployed overseas more time to receive and mail […]

Despite the tone of this, I wouldn’t make too much of it. While looking for tens of millions of dollars through a combination of cuts, deferrals, savings and fee hikes, Mayor Annise Parker repeatedly has identified the Houston Fire Department as one of the largest of budget bogeymen. Whether describing an intransigent pension board, a […]

The final tally is in, and after 13,534 in person votes were cast today, a total of 66,909 have been counted so far. This compares to 80,516 early votes for the November election. Except it doesn’t, since that total represents all of Harris County. In reality, 62,641 early in person and mail ballots were cast […]

One underappreciated aspect of this year’s election is that we may wind up with more than two new At Large City Council members. We started with two open seats, and with incumbents Sue Lovell and Jolanda Jones in runoffs, the possibility exists that we could have as many as four freshman members in January. This […]

In 2009, we have a Controller’s race that features an At Large Council member, a Council member from a high-turnout, mostly white district, and Council member from a low-turnout, mostly non-white district. In 2003, we had a Controller’s race that featured an At Large Council member, a Council member from a high-turnout, mostly white district, […]

Good news. [A]ccording to the latest Houston Area Survey, fewer than half of Harris County residents believe homosexuality is morally wrong, 61 percent believe it’s an innate characteristic rather than a lifestyle choice, and 43 percent believe gay marriages should have the same legal status as heterosexual ones — up from 32 percent just two […]

Next up in the District H special election interview series is Yolanda Navarro Flores. As far as I know, she is the only candidate to have been elected to public office before – she served one term in the Lege in HD148 from 1993-95 (she then ran for the open SD06 seat in the Democratic […]